An Utterly Subjective End of Year Round Up

Enough about you, let’s talk about me. I’m sick. I know this because I watched an entire season of The Office on Netflix yesterday and peanut butter seems disgusting. Normally, I will crawl naked across a thicket of thorns to procure peanut butter. (Well, what does your grocery store look like?) Also, when I stand up, the world seems shot by Twilight’s cinematographer; everything is blown out and too close. Also, people are drinking blood through straws. No wait, that’s just the couch.

It’s in this spirit of slight ennui and total deliriousness that I bring you my Utterly Subjective End of Year Round Up in which I speak in absolutes and you can’t object because this site doesn’t support comments.

Let’s ease into this with something indisputable.

1. Best new Chicago Restaurant: Lady Gregory. Only days after opening its doors some time last summer (I’m too sick to google.), this upscale Irish bar and restaurant already felt like a neighborhood mainstay. Since then, LG has made itself indispensable, providing not only delicious food and homey ambiance, but also holiday movie screenings, special whiskey tastings and a winter coat drive. If you’re in the market for a low-key New Year’s Eve destination, LG promises a live DJ, party favors, champagne and best of all, no cover. What are you waiting for? Go. Order the beet salad and tell them I sent you. They will have no idea what you mean, but they will still bring you the salad.

2. Best Theatre Blogger: Robert Bullen. I’ve been reviewing fewer plays lately. Guess I just got tired of screaming actors splaying themselves across my lap because the sixth row is somehow halfway on stage. Back when I saw three shows a week and was always muttering about the death of original thought and the foolishness of basing a show around jokes about Eileen Fischer, I found myself in agreement with nearly every judgement Bob made. Not only that, but we were almost always at Jewel Osco at the same time. So now, when I’m searching for quality theater, I turn to The Chicago Theatre Addict. And so should you. Check out his much more official end of year round up.

3. Best Online Vintage Store Curated by a former Chicagoan: La Poire au Jardin Vintage. I know you’ve spent all of 2011 anxiously predicting who might win this hotly contested title that I made up five minutes ago in order to pimp my sister’s vintage store. I’m sick; I do what I want. But truly, Molly Dvora Rosenblum has been my fashion guru since she started choosing her own outfits at age four. I was twelve at the time and habitually paired silky gym shorts with fishnets and a Bette Midler t-shirt. Through the years, her aesthetic choices, equal parts daring and demure, have influenced everyone with whom she comes in contact, ie a lot of cranky Milwaukee hippies—she works at a health food restaurant. Finally, she’s blessing the rest of the world with her handpicked vintage items, now available on eBay and Etsy. If Molly likes it, you won’t look like an idiot wearing it-- words to dress by.

4. Best Waste of Time: I’m sorry, but it’s still the Kardashians. Here’s what I like about them: they love each other and they talk about sex in front of Bruce Jenner. That wedding? It didn’t turn me off one bit. Nope. It made me feel sorry for Kim. That’s right, sorry! For a rich person! So what if she made $10,358.80 for each hour of matrimony? I’d love to look back on a failed marriage and think, well, at least it was lucrative. And no, I don’t blame her for my inability to legally marry. That’s like getting angry at some British dude for hydrating himself when a stranger in an impoverished nation has no access to clean drinking water. The world is an iniquitous place, and each of us has a responsibility to do what we can for those less fortunate, but that’s no reason to pull an Angelina Jolie. Besides, if the gays turn on Kim, what will she have left?

5. You guys, I really wanted there to be five things on this list, but I’ve been sitting upright for like an hour now, and the couch seriously just tried to suck my blood. How about I promise to be less subjective in 2012, you try to tell me I’m a liar but the website won’t let you comment and we all call it a day?

A writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sarah Terez Rosenblum freelances for a number of web sites and print publications. Her debut novel, “Herself When She’s Missing," (Soft Skull press) is available for pre-order here. She is also a figure model, Spinning instructor and teacher at Chicago’s StoryStudio. Inevitably one day she will find herself lecturing naked on a spinning bike. She's kind of looking forward to it actually.
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